The focus of our week was really the importance of essential questions and how to develop them. I feel like I really struggle with this; what if I don't ask the right question? I have learned, from our readings, that an essential question has to be open ended and should be based on a big idea. Our readings suggest that we should look at the big idea of a standard and decide what we want the students to walk away with. I also struggle with this because I feel like there's so much I want them to walk away with that I might overload them with a lesson. I'd like to improve on my ability to limit what I want the students to learn to one big idea. I would also like more practice on writing essential questions, so that I can develop a better understanding of how I want my students to construct meaning on their own and be able to discuss their thoughts. The students should really lead the lesson. So far, I have not really had opportunity to develop or teach a lesson from start to finish, and I feel like the only way to test my essential question skills is to be able to do it in a real scenario. The quality of my question will be determined by the quality of conversation that the students have. I'm really anxious to try this in a real classroom scenario.